Tayseri Noir
by lyricsaboutcats
Summary: When an investigation in lower Tayseri Ward leads him to the opulence of the Presidium, salarian C-Sec officer Vel Selar finds himself drawn into the secrecy and politics surrounding the crisis in the Verge. He also finds himself drawn to Meiko Ogawa, a beautiful political appointee from Tiptree on a quest for justice. (salarian/human)
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This takes place before the events of Mass Effect 1, right before the batarian Hegemony left Council Space. It's something self indulgent that I've been writing to cope with a bad year.  
_

 _There are several references in this work to The Fifth Element, Blade Runner, Policenauts, Babylon 5, and the works of Raymond Chandler. No infringement is intended. Sincere thanks to Mordinette for her support. :)_

* * *

Even without a day cycle, the docking bays of the Citadel Wards had their lulls in starship traffic. And for one hour each day the shadowed, soft blue glow of Tayseri's lowest docks held very few people. It wasn't quiet, because the Wards never truly were, but it could have passed for calm.

And morning had always seemed the best label for that hour to salarian C-Sec officer Vel Selar, who was watching a hanar sell merchandise at the far end of the entrance. The hanar's stall was separate from the main cluster of cheaply constructed market stalls designed to greet tourists with dim orange lamps and the smell of food, with their signs and flags all crowded with different languages in different colors. Everyone was ignoring it.

A yawning asari walked by it, with her skirt tilted precariously on her thighs, and a salarian businessman in a threadbare suit was playing a game on his omni-tool while he waited for a transport. The hanar illuminated itself to them all as charmingly as it could.

"Find out what the Enkindlers have in store for you," it kept calling out, "on the station that is their masterwork. One hundred credits for a prayer! Two hundred for a blessing endorsed by the Primacy itself!"

And unlike the other aliens working the market cluster, the hanar lacked a slender stem of red flowers on its counter. There were postcards and vids, trinkets and religious texts that only a hanar could read. There were cups full of spiced candy. Above everything, a holographic flag glowed purple light and displayed a shop sign.

 _Opel's Citadel Greetings! Souvenirs for friends and sweetie-hearts! Authentic Enkindler Memorabilia!_

But there were no flowers.

"That's the second day without them," Selar said, leaning against a metal bulkhead and watching the display with his turian partner. "It either isn't involved or ticked off someone who is."

The turian, a C-Sec investigator named Beran, nodded next to him and took a swig of steaming dextro coffee. His face plates were dusted with a red rust of old colony markings and his left mandible hung too low, fully inert after an injury during the required stint in the Hierarchy's military.

"Let's go," Beran grated out. He flicked his right mandible out a single time.

The hanar perked up as they approached it, then shifted a veil of green light over its pink skin. "Esteemed Officers," it said slowly, "this one believes a charm from the ruins of Mount Vassia would suit you. Or perhaps an engraved seashell from the depths of Kajhe itself?"

Selar said, "Not today, Opel," with a quiet voice. He tilted his blue-green horns forward ever so slightly in a friendly way, tugged on his jacket. "How's business?"

"The Enkindlers bless this one even when they withhold," Opel replied. "Business is as they intend it."

Beran pulled a stack of photos out of his cowl and they landed on the counter. "You know anything about this?"

Opel stared down at the photos of the red flowers, as much as Selar suspected a hanar could truly stare at anything. The illumination on its body swelled, faded, and then swelled even brighter. With a flourish, it lifted its tentacle and pushed a small button on the counter. The shop sign above it dimmed and then renewed itself with a flash of bright blue light and scrolling yellow text.

 _Famous Information Broker! Finance stocks adrift? Bondmate following a stray tide? Consult today!_

"It will cost a fee," the hanar informed them.

Selar asked, "How much?"

"Five thousand credits," it replied.

Selar let out a long, slow exhale. "The Enkindlers must be withholding a lot, Opel."

Beran scoffed impatiently at the price and narrowed his eyes. "Do you even have a license for brokering information?" he asked. "More importantly, do I look like a tourist itching to get fleeced?"

Opel wiggled, shifted from side to side. "This one is dismayed that the Esteemed Officer would insinuate such a thing. This one's information license is endorsed by every province on Rhakana."

"That's great. Rhakana's a wasteland and you know it."

"Rhakana is eternal in the eyes of the Illuminated Primate."

Selar's mouth settled into a line and he glanced at Beran, who snorted with a sub-harmonic hum. But there might actually be something to the flowers if Opel badgering them for credits over it was any indication. And it was a better lead than anything else they had found so far, which was hardly anything at all.

Citadel Security had recently been finding itself on the less armed side of criminal altercations in Tayseri's foundations, and Madam Sergeant T'Ven was in a rage whenever another employee landed in a med-bay or the morgue because of it. The latest victim, Constable Telis, had been mauled by a pit nathak. And Beran and Selar had both been wandering the Ward for several shifts looking for any information about the surge of new contraband being smuggled in.

But there was nothing. Beran had begun resorting to his favorite conspiracy theories along with enough dextro coffee to power a small sun. The latest was that the flowers were some sort of signal.

Selar sighed and picked up a holo-vid from one of the displays. "How about this," he began, and set it in front of the hanar. "What I'm going to do is buy this vid from you for a thousand credits and fail to notice that you're selling kitchen swill labeled as shrine water. What you're going to do is help my friend here with his pictures."

And then Selar waited. His finger remained on the vid.

Opel glowed with waves of luminescence while it contemplated the twenty-third installment of _Flotilla of My Yearning Heart_ placed in front of it. The Illuminated Primacy had set strict rules for the only shrine located on the station, and one of them was that no one could take water from its pools without an endorsement from the hanar embassy itself. So there was a high chance that Opel was selling water from a sink in a nearby restroom simply because it couldn't afford to buy the endorsement yet.

And that was intensely embarrassing for a religious hanar, on top of being a more common occurrence than its highest Illuminated Primate liked to admit.

"That is a fair trade," Opel said after a long moment.

Selar nodded and pulled his hand back. He didn't press about the glittering vials.

Opel's tentacles sifted through the stack of photos. It lifted and turned them all around before setting them down again with a soft slap of noise. "They began to appear two weeks ago," it told them. "The others place them at the direction of an old batarian woman."

"That's right when it started to get bad down there," Beran said, glancing at Selar. He moved his attention back to Opel. "Do you know what they're on about?"

"This one is unaware."

Selar asked, "Why don't you have any?"

"...This one may have insisted on more credits than she offered for the display," Opel replied glumly.

Selar shook his head and reached into his pocket. He slipped a chit on the counter, slid it across the distance. "Thanks, Opel," he said as he turned away. "See you around."

Beran was already relaying the information to C-Sec on his omni-tool. He headed toward a coffee kiosk nearby while humming roughly and Selar followed after him.

"Esteemed Officer," Opel called out. "You have paid without taking change." Its voice rose when Selar didn't stop or slow down. "The same thing happens on the Presidium near the cafes," it said more quickly.

Selar blinked in surprise and halted, almost ran into an elcor wandering by with a luggage case atop its head. "What?" he said as he turned around.

Opel was shimmering again. "The _zocalo_ approaches us."

Selar's translator fumbled over the word, which was unusual but not unheard of. When he tried to ask for clarification the hanar immediately busied itself switching its sign back as if it had said nothing at all. It called out to a pair of humans who were wearing expensive suits with their hair tied up into elaborate shapes. They gawked at it with open mouths.

Selar frowned a little, turned away. There wasn't anything unusual about that part.

The Council's sprawling station called the Citadel had five city-sized Wards and a ring called the Presidium joining them all at its center. It was an average temperature, one that was equally uncomfortable for every race within it. The air was like the elevator music and it was like the nutrient paste in the vats. But the humans, who were the newest Council race, hadn't had an embassy long enough to find the Citadel anything but novel.

So there were a lot of broke ones pouring in to eat nutrient paste in the vats, and a small number of wealthy ones with their mouths stuck open while they stared at everything.

And they'd get tired of it, Selar thought. Sooner or later.

He followed after Beran again, pulled his jacket tight against his shoulders. Whatever the hanar had meant by _zocalo_ , it sounded ominous, but it was the closest thing to a real lead he had found so far.

When Selar caught up at the coffee kiosk Beran gestured with his cup. "You forgot your vid," he said.

"I've already seen that one," Selar replied. He pushed a few buttons on the kiosk, slid a card he kept in his pocket through the credit reader. A white paper cup dropped down with a pop of noise and levo coffee poured into it.

"Spirits," Beran muttered. "Of course you have. You're a marshmallow for that goopy schlock." He shook his head, tucked the photos back into his cowl. "I bet you've seen the entire heartwarming, romantic series."

Selar took a drink of the coffee and didn't answer.

Beran shook his head again and grated out a small laugh, but he didn't look surprised. Citadel Security had taken to pairing enforcement officers with investigative officers on the daily beat to prevent cliques from forming between departments. And the first time the turian investigator had met his salarian partner was technically off hours in a bar, two years ago, when Selar had been on a date with a very affectionate drell named Teelah.

There had been an ocean of little green stars, all falling from nowhere and ringing like bells around her. Less experienced than he was now, Selar had believed that meant he was in love. It didn't, as it turned out. It was the bufotenin excreted by her skin.

And Beran had ribbed him about it for weeks, particularly after Selar's doped up smile had worn off and Teelah had dumped him. But Selar entertained Beran's wilder conspiracy theories about the Wards, of which there were many, some of which were true, and Beran didn't report Selar's illegal stash of repro-lab pheromones or his secret penchant for dating.

They got along.

Beran crumpled the cup, tossed it in a wastebasket that was being slowly emptied by a keeper. "How's the thing with Amalthea going?" he asked. "You watch all that stuff with her while you snuggle on the couch or something?"

Selar glanced away uneasily, watched the keeper wander by on six legs with its bag. "She moved out," he said.

Beran choked a little in surprise. "What? When?"

"A few months ago."

"You're living with this girl for half a year, and I'm just finding out _now_?"

The keeper emptied another trash can at the edge of the walkway, very methodically, and headed toward another. Selar watched it and said, "I didn't really feel like talking about it."

He still didn't. The last time he had seen her Amalthea had been a silhouette in a doorway, dark against the yellow lights of the hallway and speaking to him with low subharmonics and a smooth voice that pierced him through. His apartment over in Kithoi was still missing half its furniture because of it.

Beran got another cup of coffee. "You find someone else yet?"

"No." Selar leaned against the kiosk. "I'm done with it for a while."

Beran sighed. "Maybe it's for the best," he said. "Look, I know you're really into love for the sake of love or whatever, but not a lot of women want to live a domestic, settled life with a guy who's got twenty-five years left at best and might get knifed on the job. This serial monogamy thing you do is weird considering the circumstances."

"I just like having someone around after a shift," Selar said.

"Then get a roommate," Beran said. "Hell, get a friendly VI. It'd be sweeter to you than Amalthea ever was."

Selar looked down at his coffee. The appeal of caffeine had never revealed itself to him, but he took another taste of it. He swished it around in his mouth, swallowed, and when he felt nothing at all he said, "Are you trying to give me a pep talk?"

"Yeah. I'm no good at it." Beran swigged his own drink down and crumpled the cup again.

And Selar asked after a while, "Do you know what _zocalo_ means?"

Beran glanced at him. "No idea. The jelly say that to you?" When Selar nodded he said, "Okay, then. Maybe someone else knows."

They dropped their cups into the trash can, where Selar's landed with a wet splash, then they split up and kept looking for leads. There was the distant and then closer sound of starships landing at the numbered bays as they questioned dock workers, and then long lines began to form at the customs kiosks. The docks swelled to life around them as they worked.

A group of volus lumbered by Selar with their spouses and small children in stretchy enviro-suits, obviously on a family vacation. They queued at the end of a line. And slipping past them all, Selar tripped into a human woman. She let out a small cry of surprise and the volus family sucked in a unified breath. They all stepped away from her with tiny feet.

"My apologies," Selar said immediately. He handed her the brown suitcase that had fallen from her arms.

She clutched the suitcase and glanced up at him, smiled when their eyes met. "I suppose I'll forgive you since you're cute," she said warmly.

Selar winked at her, as he had seen humans do sometimes, and then he promptly moved on in the crowd.

Beran was questioning a group of quarian pilgrims when Selar found him again, and then they both tried the executives from Illium who were taking advantage of the cheaper travel fees of Tayseri while trying to forget the torn seats on their packet flights. As they worked Opel called out to everyone, its voice mostly smothered by the noise of starships.

No one knew anything about the contraband or what the word _zocalo_ meant. One of the executives carried a box that smelled like fruit and cloves under her arm and disdainfully murmured that the flowers looked surprised to be in such a worn out place. But the day wore on with nothing else suspicious enough to follow up on. And just as Selar and Beran were about to head back to the Citadel Security academy to continue from there, Selar's omni-tool lit up with a call.

Madam Sergeant T'Ven's voice was littered with static on his omni when he answered it. "You two still at the docks?" she said. "We've got a call about an incident over in the offices with a human diplomat. I need you to take care of it."

Selar glanced at Beran, who shrugged. "Yes, Madam Sergeant," Selar said. "That's a new one, though. Why aren't you leaving it to a customs officer?"

"He's already there," T'Ven replied irritably. "Beran," she continued, assuming he was nearby, "do you have a problem with humans?"

Beran said, "Not as much as that customs officer probably does if you're calling us about it. Turian or batarian?"

T'Ven's voice grew even more irritated. "Turian," she said. "Look, get over there and take care of the chip on his damn shoulder. There's a political hearing starting soon and I don't want the suits on the ring throwing a fit over an empty chair."

She immediately cut the connection.

Selar tapped his omni-tool's screen to life, looked down at it for a moment as the report from the call scrolled by. It was brief, probably anonymous. And it wasn't as surprising as it should have been. The rapid, almost frantic colonization of the Skyllian Verge that the human Alliance was engaging in had taken a sudden and unwanted spotlight on the galactic stage now that the batarian Hegemony was verbally sparring with them about it.

On top of that, the Relay Three Fourteen Incident, in which the Alliance had skirted far too close to starting a war with the turian Hierarchy for anyone's comfort during their first contact, was receiving an encore of attention. The tensions were high and spilling out from the embassies right into the evening news.

"What's your take on it?" Beran asked.

Selar closed his omni-tool. "That diplomat's probably a career guy who wouldn't set foot in the Verge if his life depended on it," he said, thinking about it. He didn't particularly care who it was. "They confiscated his hallex and he wants it back."

"That's negative," Beran replied with a low hum. He shook his head and said, "It's gonna be an intelligent, beautiful woman wrongly accused of a crime and you're gonna fall head over toes for her."

"I see you actually watch _Flotilla of My Yearning Heart_ ," Selar replied with a deep frown.

"Like hell I do," Beran said. "But I'm a genius about this kind of stuff."

They headed toward the customs offices as fast as they could.


	2. Chapter 2

The customs department was a long stretch of hallways that created a crescent against the docks, with alcoves and offices at occasional intervals. One alcove murmured with opera from a vid-screen, but the department was otherwise quiet. And when they asked, no one was aware of the situation with the diplomat. The officers were too busy hunched over mountains of reports and forms to entertain many questions.

Selar and Beran searched quickly, guided by nothing more than the spotty information T'Ven had sent them. They passed the tariff offices and then a private post office, moving toward the less populated side until they were little more than the sound of their own steps echoing through the recycled air. When they found her, the human diplomat was sitting primly at an officer's desk beneath dim, trembling blue lights.

A turian in uniform stood leaning over the other side of the desk with his hands gripping the edge. She was meeting the glare that he offered her, motionless except for the steady rise and fall of her chest, with her fists clenched in her lap. A pair of omni-cuffs glowed at her wrists.

"I have the right to contact my ambassador under council statute three sixteen, section four," she said with burning eyes.

"You have the right to be treated like everyone else on this dock," the turian bit out in response. "This isn't the Presidium."

And Selar recognized her immediately. It was the human woman he had bumped into. She stole a wide-eyed glance at him when he entered the alcove, but any relief or recognition in her eyes was overwhelmed by caution at the sight of his uniform. She turned back to the turian, clearly expecting nothing from anyone around her. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and her fists clenched tighter.

Her long dark hair moved over her shoulders when she opened her eyes and lifted her chin defiantly. "Statute three sixteen, section five," she continued, "states that I have the right to a neutral witness and an advocate. Section six states that if an embassy and Citadel Security have an unresolved dispute the embassy's judgment will take immediate precedence. Section seven..."

Soft looking strands of her hair were cut straight across her forehead, just above eyebrows that pinched together reproachfully at the turian. And now that Selar had a chance to notice, he realized that she was wearing the expected Presidium attire of a high collared, long-sleeved dress in two colors. She must have arrived not long ago, expecting to be whisked straight into negotiations. Low heeled shoes, perfectly new, matched and peeked out from the rose and ivory fabric draped over her legs.

Selar stared at her for a long moment, blinking. He then shot Beran a glance, as if his partner had conjured her simply to make a point.

And Beran took a deep, humming snort as he suppressed a laugh. "Genius, I tell you," he said.

But, more important than the coincidence of the situation was the fact that the diplomat seemed to be coldly reciting every archaic Council statute that was about to cost the turian customs officer his position in Citadel Security. It was unusual to see an alien detailing them all off the cuff like that. And it was impressive to see just how much panic had settled into the turian's eyes because of it.

"Finally," the turian said, but the relief in his voice didn't match his expression. He straightened and removed his hands from the desk edge, picked up a holo-pad and set it down again. "I don't recognize you guys," he added. "You enforcement?"

"Statute three seventeen states that during a detainment..."

"Yes," Selar answered with a nod, covering for his partner's indisposed, snorting state. "Can you tell us what happened?"

The turian gestured at the woman. His subharmonics lilted a sting of panic at the sound of her voice continuing. "She thinks she can bypass regulations and bring in luggage that exceeds station limits. I confiscated it and then caught her sneaking into the evidence room to steal it back."

Beran smothered another laugh.

Selar glanced evenly at Beran, then back to the turian officer. "Are you aware that she's an Alliance diplomat?" he asked, tapping his omni-tool on to register a skycar for escort through an emergency lane with traffic control.

The turian's voice lost its harsh edge, but the panic in his eyes sharpened. "Shit," he muttered. He turned toward Selar as if they were friends, moved closer to him. "Look, I didn't notice. You know how it gets down here."

Selar nodded a little, kept dialing. Much like traffic control, customs was low on staff and high on hours. Things were more frantic for the officers than they should have been. Quotas were high.

But just Selar and the turian weren't friends, it was more likely that the turian was simply being obstructionist while claiming ignorance as T'Ven had implied. He had to have noticed her identification. And it wouldn't have been far-fetched for someone to meddle because they sympathized with the anti-human side of the political climate.

In either case, they needed to get her to the Presidium before the human embassy started accusing C-Sec of obstructionism. And before they were right, considering the circumstances.

"You didn't listen to me," the diplomat said. She looked at Selar. "No one here is listening to me. He took everything from me right away when I arrived. I was trying to get my multipass back."

"You're a thief, human," the turian said. But he looked agitated at the word multipass. He smoothed his hands along his uniform.

Selar glanced at the diplomat and hesitated with his fingers on the omni's haptic. He then raised his brow wordlessly at Beran, who had sobered from his amusement immediately with a dark look. Multipasses weren't confiscated except under the direst of circumstances; they were recognized across Council Space as official travel documents. There were very few situations in which confiscating one was warranted.

"What was your name, again?" Selar asked the turian, hands still lingering unsteadily over the half-complete call but no longer dialing. "I didn't catch it."

The officer frowned, looked away. "Vantius," he said. "Look, like I said, I didn't know she was a diplomat."

"I don't care if she's a duct rat," Beran said. "Where the hell is her pass?"

"In the quartermaster's office."

Selar put his omni-tool on standby, straightened and studied Vantius. His white colony markings were etched into a dusty tattoo across his eyes, in a subtle yet far more expensive method than the synth-crylics recommended by the Hierarchy, yet other than the tattoo there was nothing suspicious about him. But the situation began to take on a darker hue and Selar's lingering thoughts about obstructionism and embassy politics fell away.

In batarian space, where slavery was legal and high tradition, the novelty of the latest Council race translated into an avalanche of credits. And there was a lot of traffic from batarian space doing business in Tayseri.

"So how much was this weight limit exceeded, exactly?" Selar asked.

Any comradery between one C-Sec employee and another instantly evaporated. Vantius' subharmonics grew hard. "Four hundred grams," he answered, shifting his glare from the diplomat to Selar. "What about it?"

Selar said, "That's not even a can of tupari."

Vantius bristled further. "Look, I don't play favorites. If the Council wants to give humans special protections and coddle them up on the ring, fine. But there are regulations down here and she broke them."

Selar motioned his hand gently at Beran, who let out a low, suspicious hum and headed back toward the quartermaster lockers to search for the multipass. A dull, sinking feeling began to press in his stomach.

"You can't go back there," Vantius said angrily. "You're just enforcement. You need a warrant or an investigator to even confiscate anything."

Beran threw a subharmonic noise over his shoulder that wasn't subtle in its meaning, along with flashing his badge. When Vantius tried to follow after him anyway, grumbling, Selar stepped in front of him.

Selar leaned over a few inches to meet the man's eyes and said politely, "I actually am enforcement, so you and I are going to remain here for now."

Vantius snorted at that, looking up at Selar's horns, but he returned to his desk and sat down, strangely put his feet up. "So this is how it's gonna be, then?" he grumbled. "Now that humans are on the station you're just going to let them bully everyone else and get their way like always?"

Selar ignored the comment. He held out his hand, gesturing for the diplomat to toward him. "We'll take care of this down at the academy," he told Vantius, but looked carefully at her. "You don't need to worry about it. We're here to help you."

The diplomat watched him suspiciously. If there had been a council statute for mistrust Selar believed she probably would have begun reciting it to him. Vantius might have more associates, and he could see her weighing the risk of it.

Vantius muttered, "You'd think there was an eezo core in that cesspool you call a homeworld."

She stood up with a screech of her chair. Beneath her stony expression, she blushed, livid with anger. And Selar wondered how long she had been repeating statutes while he tossed insults like that at her. He had probably planned to take her from the offices, citing a precinct transfer of some sort and hoping she was ignorant of regulations and procedure.  
It was possible that the call to T'Ven had been a cleaner officer stating their own opinion. Everyone in the department had been strangely reticent.

She hesitated while Selar kept his hand out, her body rigid with caution, then she walked toward him as calmly as she could with a deep breath to steady her anger. He didn't have a lot of experience with humans, particularly ones who weren't involved with C-Sec as employees, but he thought that she looked exhausted when she came toward him. He also thought that she looked vividly frightened, and was pushing it down.

Her heels clicked on the hard floor in the silence.

Selar frowned at the sound. Vantius had probably been too busy counting credits in his head at the sight of her to even read her identification. Selar undid her omni-cuffs when she reached him, carefully didn't touch her.

"Are you all right?" he asked her quietly.

"Yes," she answered, looking up at him. "I wasn't going to let him take me anywhere."

Selar nodded at that, noting her optimism and approving of it even if he didn't quite share it.

"She's fine," Vantius grumbled. "You think I'd rough someone up over luggage?"

Selar said, glancing at him, "Maybe over credits."

Vantius sneered and stood up. But he also looked deeply embarrassed. "What the hell are you implying?" he said. "You think there aren't a bunch of people around here who are as fed up as I am? Humans break rules all the damn time. And here you are to sweep it under the rug like a good little beat cop, just like up there on the ring."

"Oh, come on," Beran said behind him, holding a suitcase over his shoulder. "That's just comically racist. Could you have been any more obvious about trying to traffick this woman off the station? You don't give a shit about politics."

Vantius whirled around. "How dare you even-"

"Look, we're in a hurry so I'm going to let you in on a secret," Beran continued, flicking his right mandible. He held up four multipasses. "I'm the nice, friendly cop in this partnership. And I'm the one who's going to rip your plates off if you try anything before backup gets here. Are we clear enough about that?"

Vantius fell into angry silence, his eyes on the passes. The muscles in his neck tightened. His gaze then slid over to Selar, hesitant about the horns now that ripping someone's plates off somehow made Beran the nice, friendly cop of the pair. "No. We're clear enough," he answered after a moment.

"Then sit down," Selar said evenly.

Vantius sat down in a chair.

And when Selar contacted her, Madam Sergeant T'Ven's response sounded like a biotic car crash complete with screaming and sirens. Officers from the academy began to arrive almost immediately. He sighed a little, listening to it all on the line as it approached and then overwhelmed the hallways.

The diplomat waited with Selar and Beran, away from the other officers who came in. And Selar took the suitcase from Beran, handed it to her while he read the tag. "Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree," he recited as Beran handed her a multipass that matched. "Welcome to the Citadel. I wish the introduction had been more pleasant for you."

"Thank you," she said unsteadily. The color began slowly returning to her face, and she held the suitcase in front of her, clutching the handle tightly with both hands as they escorted her to a skycar outside. A tiny solar system of planets and stars hung on a keychain attached to the handle. It twinkled with noise as she walked.

"You could have punched that guy before we left," Beran said to her when they settled her in the back seat. "Diplomatic immunity has its advantages."

Meiko studied him for a moment as if she wasn't sure whether or not he was attempting humor with such a comment. "I didn't want to make things worse," she said. She placed her hands in her lap, and some of the anger slipped across her eyes again before she composed herself. "Now that I'm late for the hearing I suppose I should have."

"I'm sure they'll have a million more hearings for you," Selar said. He got into the skycar behind the wheel. "If the Ambassador has any sense she'll be relieved that you're safe."

He could see her watching him in the rearview mirror. "Yes, I suppose you're right," she replied.

And Selar started and shifted the skycar into gear, with Beran in the front seat next to him. The car lifted through the air, surging with a soft, mechanical hum toward the traffic lanes. They would take her up to the Presidium and then head for the academy, where there would be a mountain of paperwork waiting. An investigation would inevitably follow.

They made small talk with Meiko, keeping her mind occupied during the short trip. She was a colonial arbitration lawyer from the Alliance's colonies, and she had been reassigned as a political appointee to the Citadel until further notice due to the growing crisis in the Skyllian Verge. She looked out the window while the lights reflected in her eyes, sat mostly still on the tan seat surrounded by smoke colored windows.

"I should have done something," she said after a while, mostly to herself. She looked as if the weight of the situation had begun to settle on her.

Beran said, "You did fine. You were scaring the fringe off him."

The skycar rumbled gently, and they rose beyond the normal lanes and lines of neon headlights. The air in the cabin was warm after the colder drafts of the dock. Selar's thoughts wandered as he drove, listening to the car hum, and he tried not to think about the other multipasses that were probably back in those offices.

When his eyes rose to check the rearview mirror during a merge back into regular traffic, they immediately met Meiko's. She had been watching him and smiled before moving her attention back to the view of the wards from the skylane.

At least they saved someone, he thought, and looked forward again. But there were a lot of people who fell through the cracks in the Citadel. It wasn't as unusual as it should have been, like everything else.

"I get tired of it being dark all the time," Beran was saying next to Selar. He looked irritated and he sighed, settling deeper into his seat. "I feel like I should be in a bar or something. Spirits, there's probably a group of them in those offices grabbing people. I definitely need to be in a bar."

Selar said, distantly within his own thoughts, "You just need a healthy hobby to combat stress."

Beran chuckled. "Don't even start with me."

Selar's horns burned faintly at the unsaid accusation concerning his own free time, and he wondered if he should take up a hobby now that Amalthea was gone. Perhaps model ships like most of his brothers and uncles. Glue and decals, and shining bronze models of the Destiny Ascension with its turian cruiser escorts.

And little silver stars, silently falling everywhere on clear wires that you could hardly see.

Selar pushed the thought away, focused on driving and avoided the rear view mirror as much as he could. He watched the neon lights marking the empty lane. And the ring of the Presidium loomed monolithic ahead of the skycar, outlined against the thick blue haze of the Widow system while turning slowly.


	3. Chapter 3

Compact offices hidden behind blue windows stacked endlessly above a central grove of bright, sunshine yellow trees in the central atrium of Citadel Security's academy. From the very first day he was handed a badge, Selar had never been able to decide if the decor was meant to be calming or intimidating. But he suspected that it was a mixture of both. Every noise rose and bounced off the glass, traveling upward through shadows and perfectly motionless, perfectly shaped boxwood leaves.

And Selar sat at a desk in one of the lower offices, legs aching and stiff while the atrium echoed next to him beyond the window. He puffed out a cloud of smoke with a toneless expression and tried not to think of where he was going to be in a few hours.

He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, looked down at it, then put it back in again. There was a pack of them tucked between his horns.

"That's great," Beran was saying, sitting at the other side of the desk with his legs propped up on it. "Real great. Give yourself some sort of lizard breathing disease cause she moved out, right?"

Selar took another experimental drag off the cigarette, carefully dropped the ash into an etched ivory seashell resting on the table. "I'm just trying it out," he said, watching the ash stutter with an orange glow. The embers made a soft, vague little crinkle of noise.

Beran said, "How is it?"

The ash cooled into a dull grey. Selar stubbed out the cigarette into the shell and turned his attention back to the holo-console, typing again. "I don't really understand the appeal of it," he admitted. More smoke poured out of his mouth.

"Yeah, well. Give the pack here then," Beran said.

Selar continued typing with one hand and passed the bundle of cigarettes over with his other, now losing smoke from his nostrils. Beran tucked it into his cowl.

And through the useless nicotine veil rising into his eyes, a final report on Selar's console glowed darkly passive. There had been seventeen multipasses in Tayseri's quartermaster office, all registered to humans. But no one who had been apprehended over the matter still remained in a jail cell. On the contrary, the turian named Vantius had become a sudden expert when it came to Council statutes thanks to Meiko's forceful lesson and had run off to the embassies with the other suspects. And the batarian ambassador, Jath'Amon, was petitioning to give them all diplomatic immunity as guests of the Hegemony.

The thought made Selar's stomach curdle. The human embassy, headed by Anita Goyle, was a storm of outrage and accusations now that the suspects were no longer in custody. It was one step away from openly accusing Citadel Security of colluding with batarian traffickers due to anti-human sentiment on the station. Worse, Selar was losing confidence that it was going to be wrong. The whole thing in Tayseri smelled worse than the cigarettes.

Beran sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and pulled his feet off the desk. He grabbed a holo-pad and got back to work. "This is why people go rogue," he muttered, "or turn into vigilantes in the Terminus systems."

Selar, with a cough in his voice as he looked up from the orange screen, said, "I was thinking of taking up model ships."

Beran grated out a sharp laugh. He put down the pad again. "You gotta be stressed beyond capacity to build a model ship, Vel. You ever going to tell me what Amalthea said to you?"

Selar shook his head, fingers clicking on the keys. "It wasn't anything."

"It was something all right."

Selar frowned, his hands pausing on the haptic interface again. The noise of the atrium pounded against the windows. "I think she was right about me," he said.

Beran snorted, clearly unmoved. "That's bullshit and you know it. She said whatever she thought would hurt you the most." He tapped the holo-pad on the desk, eyes very cold. "Look," he continued, "I know you're a dope for those vids and books you're always grabbing at, but real people aren't like that. It isn't always clean and nice at the end."

Selar blinked and said, without ire, "Are you trying to give me a pep talk again?"

"Yeah, Vel, I'm trying to give you a damn pep-"

"Are you really smoking cigarettes in one of my offices, Investigator?" T'Ven called out smoothly as she walked in.

Beran froze with the bundle of cigarettes still in his cowl. "Nah, Madam Sergeant," he said after a moment.

T'Ven looked up at the thin clouds of smoke gathered at the ceiling, looked down again with hard eyes and a perfectly calm expression on her lavender face. The fabric of her uniform had the quality of commando leathers despite the standard issue design, and anyone who was bold enough to ask her if she actually had any in her closet ended up finding out exactly how proficiently she had earned them back on Thessia.

She crossed her arms, leaned over a little. "Don't lie to me, Berantus," she said softly. "You know how much I hate losing the people I love the most."

Beran's right mandible twitched a single time, then dropped into half of a resigned, brittle smile. To his credit, he tried to be good. "Tell me that again," he still began, "when you haven't had four salarian bondma-"

Selar raised the seashell filled with cigarette stubs immediately. "Apologies for my indiscretion, Madam Sergeant," he interrupted, before Beran was reduced to a wet blue smudge on the floor.

T'Ven drew and exhaled a long breath through her nose, uncrossed her arms and settled her hands on her hips. She gave Selar a look that could have withered a garden world. "You know that hanar you were talking to," she said after exactly ten seconds had passed, "the merchant on the docks? Someone knifed it with one of those new omni-blades we've been seeing."

Selar set the seashell down. The etchings dusted with ash were hanar prayers. He felt a pang of guilt at that and said quietly, "Did it survive the attack?"

"It managed to get away, but it's in the intensive unit down at Huerta." T'Ven's attention moved back to Beran. "I want you to get down there," she added. "Check in with the captain before you go."

Beran cocked his head to the side. "Just me?"

"Just you."

Beran stood up, pausing reluctantly between T'Ven and Selar for a moment. Selar merely tilted his horns forward, didn't argue or say anything. And Beran began to watch them both as if they were plotting against him. "You think about what I told you," he eventually said and left in a gust of cleaner air pouring in from the doorway.

T'Ven watched him go, shook her head when the door clicked shut. "He thinks I'm going to try to kill you."

"You reassigned me to the Presidium," Selar said, as if that wasn't much better. He closed the holo-console and folded his hands on the desk.

"I see you had time to read the summons while you were stinking up my offices. Technically, Lariad reassigned you."

Selar didn't respond to that. Everyone knew that T'Ven ran the precinct in Tayseri, more out of necessity than any lust for power. Captain Lariad was an ancient batarian man who spent his days telling stories at the various outposts and picking his teeth. Selar hardly ever saw him.

T'Ven asked, "Did you tell Berantus yet?"

Selar raised a brow, looked up at her. "Of course I didn't tell him," he said. "I'm never going to live it down. Everyone's going to be laughing about it at my retirement party."

And Selar hoped that she didn't see the exasperation in his eyes, knew that she probably did. The line of his mouth, already thin with a frown, grew dour. But T'Ven had a short temper for arguing and insubordination, even shorter than her temper for everything else, and she demanded obedience from her officers at all times. He knew better than to challenge the reassignment to the ring.

Just as important, he had really stunk up that office.

He still didn't like it; it was unheard of to send someone who worked the foundations back to the ring. Selar let out a slow, reluctant exhale, coughed a little, leaned back in his chair as he thought about it. Rookies worked up on the Presidium learning the ropes until they were cleared for duty in the wards. And nothing ever happened up there other than maybe a bureaucrat complaining that his Mount Milgnon wasn't cold enough in its solid gold ice bucket.

Selar asked, "Do I have enough goodwill left to ask you for a reason?"

T'Ven glanced up again at the smoke still lingering on the ceiling. "Barely," she said and seated herself across from him. She crossed her legs, grabbed Beran's abandoned holo-pad and stylus, began writing something.

She didn't say anything further.

"Why, Madam Sergeant?" Selar asked politely.

"We offered the Alliance diplomats an escort between the Presidium's apartments and the embassies as a sign of goodwill," she said, "but Meiko Ogawa is refusing to allow anyone from C-Sec who isn't you or Beran anywhere near her." She sighed as she thought about it. "And after what happened," she added, "I'm not that eager to argue with her about it. Ambassador Goyle is insisting she needs an escort."

"Ah," was all that Selar said.

Neither of them said anything else for a while. Selar stayed very still as the clouds drifted above him, watched the window while T'Ven wrote on her pad with a soft scratching noise. He thought about escorting a diplomat to cafes that smelled like freshly pulled espresso shots and embassies full of expensive suits, with their hearings and negotiations and nothing else at all, and he drowned the urge to get up and board a starship headed straight for the galactic core.

Even worse, he thought about that smile in the rear view mirror, the one that matched the smile in the crowd, and his rule about never mixing his personal feelings with his professional life. It was a simple rule that he had never broken. It was an easy one to keep when he was working down in the foundations of the Wards, knee deep in violent crime and emergency calls, and far away from anyone who smiled at him like Meiko Ogawa did.

It was easy to be done with romance when you stayed away from the possibility of it, he thought. He should never have even winked at her. Something about Meiko Ogawa gave him the sensation that he was falling off a cliff head first, with his stomach permanently lodged in his throat.

And so Selar said, to his own peril, "Get someone else."

T'Ven stopped writing, blinked as if she hadn't quite heard him properly. She looked up and gave him a heavy stare. Selar held it grimly, leaning back further in the leather chair that squeaked in the following silence.

The noise of the atrium pounded again, a little louder.

T'Ven's eyes narrowed. "If you have such a problem with an assignment like this," she said, "then maybe you should have accepted the promotion to Special Response that the Executor tried to give you last year. I need Berantus on the contraband investigation."

Selar nodded, broke the gaze and looked out the windows again. He wasn't going to push his luck twice.

"The other reason I'm accommodating Miss Ogawa," T'Ven continued, writing again, "is because the batarians are threatening to close their embassy and secede if those negotiations fall through."

Selar blinked at that, turned to her again and leaned forward in the chair. No race had ever voluntarily closed an embassy before in the history of Council space. "That's absurd," he said. "They already have Camala and half the Verge. The cyanobacteria export alone has been keeping Shalta's private science sector afloat."

"Yes, I know." T'Ven set the holo-pad in her lap and continued, "Look, I don't want a rookie with something to prove getting in over their head while we try to figure out what's going on with all of this. You've been on the beat long enough to know exactly what you and everyone else should be doing up there."

He narrowed his eyes a little. "You think the embassy's threat to secede is related to the contraband and trafficking in Tayseri."

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I do. So go up there for me and don't make a scene about it. Just put on a nice show for the Alliance and see if you can find any connections."

And then she handed him the holo-pad and the stylus.

Selar immediately signed it, scratching his entire name along the bottom in two lines. "Thank you, Madam Sergeant," he said to her as he did so, because that was what you said to T'Ven even when she wrote you up for smoking and sent you to the ring.

T'Ven stood up, huffing a little when she took the pad back. But before she left the office Selar remembered something and asked, "Did forensics figure out what _zocalo_ means?"

She ran her hand over her crest, hesitated in the doorway. "Not yet," she admitted to him. " And it garbles my translator every time someone tries to say it. Does that happen to you?"

"I thought it was a problem with the hanar's speech patterns at first," he said. "Drell have a similar issue."

She nodded, turned away. "It's probably a batarian word. You know how it is."

Selar was unsettled by the implication as she left, leaned back in the chair again. The Hegemony was notoriously rigid with its own citizens and enforced a caste system that required an excess of credits to stay within its upper echelons. Only the higher castes were even allowed to work on the Citadel, and the linguistic glossaries that the Hegemony provided to the Council each year were openly censored.

And if _zocalo_ was indeed a batarian word or phrase of some sort, it would be difficult to find someone on the station willing to divulge what it meant. The batarians working in C-Sec would feign ignorance for the sake of their own safety and continued presence on the station.

Worse, Selar had already repeated it with Beran on the docks to an excess of people. They had revealed their hand right away. He stayed at the desk for a while, mulled over it before leaving. When he stood up to leave he did so very carefully, very slowly, and the chair didn't make any sound at all.

A few hours later he stepped into an empty elevator in the atrium, wearing a neutral expression as he turned and waited for the door to close. He had stood under a shower until he no longer reeked of smoke, wore a fresh jacket and uniform. There were papers tucked under his arm for the C-Sec outpost in the embassies detailing that he would be working there until further notice.

And it would be morning on the ring when Selar arrived on the Presidium. It would be afternoon and then night in a way he didn't usually experience or think about. He had lived his entire life in the multi-colored neon twilight of the Wards.

The elevator door slid closed with a hiss of air and a snap, then started upward toward the Presidium. Through the clear door Selar could still see the sweeping crowd of C-Sec officers in blue and black uniforms that were rapidly going about their business. Unlike Tayseri's docks, the academy was never calm. There were too many officers and never enough, all churning about beneath the trees. The time of day meant very little in such a place.

As the elevator began to rise upward, Selar spotted an asari in the crowd who was waiting at the requisitions desk. She was wearing a yellow pinstripe dress that matched the trees and she stood in complete silence, graceful even when motionless. A turian in plainclothes was heading toward her, angry and roughly pushing past every officer and civilian between them.

The metal of the elevator shaft dropped over everything just as he reached her.

Selar blinked, remained otherwise completely still.

The elevator vibrated beneath his toes and he rose far above the foundations and the lower Wards. Only ten galactic minutes away, buried within the Presidium's bulkheads, an ocean of sunshine faker than a pop song was waiting for him. It would pour itself over clean, glittering silver lines of open architecture, serene in every way. And Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree would be there somewhere with her rose-colored dress that matched her smile, and with her little shoes that clicked wherever she walked. She would be waiting with the keychain covered in planets and stars that twinkled and didn't mean anything at all.

Selar let out a long exhale as he thought about it. Swore to no one, " _Shakmi_ ," very quietly.

Another soft swear fell from his mouth, repeated itself again. He read the papers once more, moved them under his other arm, and casted about in his mind for anything else to think about. But it was difficult to picture anything else except for the silhouette of Amalthea lingering the doorway, and the deep silence of the apartment at his back while he had tried to convince her to stay. He could remember it perfectly over flavorless, tinny elevator music.

 _You don't feel a thing_ , _Vel,_ she had said to him very softly. Her subharmonics had been mournful as they drifted with the with the dust in the brighter lights of the hallway. _You use women like other guys use hallex._

 _And you're not in love with me or anybody else._


	4. Chapter 4

Selar stood near rows of tilted gray slats, where the soft green glow of Kithoi poured through the window blinds and trembled over sparse furniture in stripes of light. He held two hundred grams of tupari in a clear glass, drank it without tasting it except for a hint of sugar burning against his throat. There was a vid screen displaying the Mannovai news in orange on the wall behind him.

"The Alliance is forcing our hand further each day, make no mistake," Ambassador Jath'Amon was telling a salarian reporter. "Do you think they will stop with the Verge? If the Council won't stand against their reprehensible hunger for expansion, the Hegemony will."

The apartment was a modest size, the usual for the Wards. The living room was connected to an open kitchen and a hallway led to a bedroom and bath. And on his coffee table, next to a houseplant topped with pink oval flowers, a model of the _Tecunis_ sat new in its shrinkwrap. It was covered in holofoil stars while an excited exclamation of galactic common curled around it.

 _Official Union Memorabilia! Accurate, Exciting! Relive First Contact with friends and first circle!_

Selar glanced at it, filled the glass again and brought it to his mouth. He looked away out the window and watched the buildings until they were nothing more than neon lines and colors.

It was the fourth day he had done so.

And when he arrived on the Presidium for the latter half of his fourth shift there, Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree walked down a set of silver stairs surrounded on all sides by a dozen humans wearing colorful formal attire that complimented her own. There was a high ceiling above her that glittered with glass windows full of sunlight, illuminating everything except for the long black hair falling over her shoulders.

But despite the luxury of the embassies, the human procession had the quality of a funeral to it, one where the deceased had been revealed to be a con man and a cheat during the eulogy. Meiko walked silently behind Ambassador Goyle, whose expression was mournful and betrayed at the same time.

"This is an outrage," a sharp-nosed man was seething as they descended. "The batarians think they can bully us, threaten our stock markets, and the Council does nothing."

The line of Goyle's mouth grew very thin. She stopped moving and the other humans halted in one united, obedient movement. The man shrank beneath the combined gaze of the group, then gathered his courage and continued, "Ambassador, we have to start contacting the investors of those colonies. This isn't only about the Verge-"

"You will hold your composure no matter what this is about," Goyle interrupted before he could say another word. She began moving again, and the others followed suit. They reached the bottom of the stairs and dispersed into the greater crowd of the lobby.

Selar waited for Meiko at the front desk, watched all of it happen. He leaned against the desk as she wove through the crowd toward him. He had been anticipating the moment for hours, dreaded it now that it had arrived. It felt like he was floating in the reduced gravity of the ring.

And what he wanted to have, secretly, was a pretty line for her like _here's looking at you, kid_ , and a big clear umbrella. He wanted the fake sunshine outside to burst into a drizzle just long enough for him to open that umbrella for her while the vid credits rolled over both of them.

"Are you all right, sir?" the asari behind the desk asked him.

Selar glanced at her with a clouded expression. What he actually had was a C-Sec issued pistol that he had been taking apart and putting back together to cope with the boredom of the ring's outpost and a message on his omni from T'Ven that another officer was in the hospital courtesy of an unlicensed and untraced assault mech.

"I'm in the wrong type of vid," he explained quietly.

The asari opened her mouth as she puzzled over that, then closed her mouth and went back to work.

"I'm sorry I've kept you waiting, Constable," Meiko said when she reached him. "The negotiations have become tense as of late."

He dipped his head politely and didn't mention the understatement. "It's not an inconvenience, Miss Ogawa."

And the Presidium was just as Selar expected as he escorted her to the apartments, yet somehow less than he remembered from his own time as a bright eyed rookie. The trees were very tall above him, with green leaves that never stopped moving in a computer-orchestrated breeze. Everything else was sky and metal and sparkling water.

But there were no leads or connections to Tayseri be found. Any answers were behind doors that only Special Tactics and Reconnaissance could hope to open, and the markets that the hanar called Opel had spoken of held no flowers, only an elcor who tried to feed Selar a cake dusted with moss and sugar when he stopped there. The batarians were too spooked to reveal anything at all.

In fact, the batarians on the ring had adopted an expression that usually involved a knife pointed right at their eyes. It didn't suit the wealth that they flaunted, nor the servants and mistresses that trailed behind them in heavy silks.

Selar was at a loss about all of it.

Meiko was subdued until they reached her apartment. She then set her bag down on the counter, clutched it tightly and asked, "Would you like to stay? I'd like to make you a cup of tea to thank you for your trouble."

"I have to be going," he answered distantly. He leaned over his omni, scanned the room. He hoped he looked busy and knew that he probably didn't. No one wearing a badge on the ring ever did.

And then she asked, "Do you dislike me, Constable? Is it because I'm human?"

Her voice sounded like glass.

Selar blinked in surprise, looked up from the omni-tool. When their eyes met he inwardly debated whether telling Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree that he disliked her because she was a human would be worse than telling her the truth, which was that he thought she was lovely enough to commit a level three Union felony for.

"I just don't mix my personal and professional lives," he said, pushing the thought aside. He looked back down at the omni and added, tugging his jacket with his free hand for emphasis, "Tea with you seems rather personal."

Meiko studied him for a moment, let go of the purse. She went to a white porcelain teapot on a counter and turned to him as it hung by its wooden handle on her fingers. "This is a professional kitchen grade teapot," she informed him quite seriously. She wiggled it. "It can withstand a thousand galactic standard degrees and it makes very professional tea for very professional Constables like yourself."

And then she waited.

Selar raised a brow at her, but he closed his omni-tool with a tap against his wrist.

Meiko placed the pot in the center of her round dining table. A matching set of cups followed as he sat down, then she dropped tea leaves into the pot and poured steaming hot water from a carafe. The steam curled around her wrists and pale hands as she worked, then eddied and trailed along her dress when she turned to retrieve a pair of napkins from the counter.

On that afternoon the dress was still white, but also light blue. The secondary color of the dress changed every day, still pressed and high collared with Meiko Ogawa hiding somewhere beneath it. The fabric had gathered along her waist and she smoothed it with her hands.

And he should get up and leave immediately, Selar thought as he watched her. But he didn't get up. Instead, he shifted nervously in the chair and his knees knocked the underside of the human-sized table.

The teapot rattled violently.

Meiko glanced over her shoulder, smiled faintly. She returned to the table and poured them both cups full of bright green tea. She said, "You're not very good at being tall, are you?"

"It's not usually a problem," he replied unsteadily, and carefully stretched his legs.

She sat down with him. She acted as if they were playing a joke together while she watched him bring the cup to his mouth. "So, how is it?" she said, almost in a whisper.

Selar let out a small noise that might have been a laugh if he was someone else. But he felt that he was in on the joke even if he shouldn't be. "It's very professional," he admitted, "but you and I aren't so convincing."

Meiko's smile brightened until it matched the smile in the crowd and the smile in the rearview mirror. "Oh, look at you," she said to him.

And Selar's eyelids trembled. He didn't say anything else about it.

He drank with her for a while, didn't taste the tea much. Hers was the same as every other apartment on the Presidium with its open terrace instead of windows. She had hung a wind chime on the terrace, one covered in planets and stars like her keychain. He looked up at it and said, "You haven't been to the Citadel before."

"No," she said, holding her cup of tea, "but it's more familiar than I expected it to be. The people here seem the same as anywhere else." She looked out at the trees. "It's been very disappointing so far."

"Most humans expect it to be different," he said, nodding. "You should go see the sights. You haven't gone anywhere but here and your meetings."

"I should tell you something, actually," she said. The expression on her face imbued the situation with a far murkier hue than the teapot or Selar's eyelids. She set her cup down and he waited for her to continue. "The batarian embassy is going to close when these negotiations end."

"I'd heard they were threatening that," he said.

Meiko seemed surprised that he knew. "They aren't threatening it at all," she corrected. "Ambassador Goyle believes the Council has been planning to let them secede without protest from the very beginning. Without the authority of Council treaties, the batarians will be able to overwhelm our colonial defenses in the Verge." She placed her hands in her lap, looked down at them. "I've been brought in with a few others to make sure the details on our side are tied up correctly, to defend against the accusations that will follow afterward."

His eyes narrowed a little. "What kind of accusations?"

She looked up at him, didn't say anything else. The trees outside sounded like a cascade of whispers as they moved in the silence.

It wasn't possible to hide the concern in his voice. Selar set his own cup down and said, "You need to be careful who you talk to about things like this. It's a breach of confidentiality to even tell me what you're doing in there, let alone that there's going to be a conflict. Salarian officers are expected to report to a Special Tasks liaison when they hear anything suspicious."

Meiko studied him calmly. "Are you going to turn me in?"

He let out a small exhale. "No," he said. "I've decided you're the least suspicious person I've ever met."

And Selar didn't talk to spooks much. He had his own reasons for that.

An OSD appeared between Meiko's fingers in response, like a magic trick, and she placed it next to his cup. "Then I suppose I can also tell you that Ambassador Jath'Amon has a grandson who isn't happy with the current situation concerning the embassy. They've been arguing in the hallways about several things you and your partner might be interested in. They mentioned Tayseri."

Meiko didn't know about the contraband investigation and so he didn't press for more information about it. Instead, he said, "You've been following the batarians because of Vantius."

"Yes," she replied. "I've promised myself that I'll do something if I run into him again."

The intensity in her eyes was startling. "So Goyle didn't insist on an escort at all, did she?" Selar asked. He held the OSD up to the light. "You asked and she went along with it so you could pass the information without suspicion."

"Yes. I'm sorry for the subterfuge, Constable. You and your partner are the only ones who've listened to me." Her composure faltered then, and she said apologetically, "If you need to go anywhere let me know and I'll have business there. I'd like to help you if anything happens."

Selar shook his head. "I want you to stay away from it. The last person who talked to me about Tayseri ended up in the hospital. It's not just people disappearing down there, it's more complicated than that."

"All the more reason my offer to help should stand."

He leaned over, slipped the OSD into his pocket. "All the more reason I want you to stay away from it. I'll look into this for you, but only if you promise to be more careful."

She was clearly undaunted by his caution. But she said, "I promise," and picked up the teapot again.

Selar wordlessly handed her his cup when she offered him more tea and tried not to knock his knees against her table while he drank it. He didn't know what could be on the OSD that was so damning that she would risk recording it. Not even diplomatic immunity would save her from what was essentially espionage against another embassy.

And he felt a little grim about that. He didn't want anything to happen to her.

When he stood to leave sometime later Meiko reached up and began straightening the collar of his jacket, as if he was about to return to work after a quick lunch and she wanted him to look his best. "You're still cute," she said, smiling. "Your partner made it sound like you were mean, but you don't seem that way at all."

Selar remembered Beran threatening Vantius in the offices. "That's just something he says to confuse people when we're working," he explained. "He usually says I'm a marshmallow."

"Do you know what a marshmallow is?"

"I think it means I'm a sap, Miss Ogawa."

"It just means you're sweet," she said softly. "Will you kiss me before you leave?"

He looked down at her. A warm sensation ran through him, one that started exactly where her fingers brushed against his neck. He placed his hand over hers, keeping it against him for a moment. If he kissed her once he would end up kissing her a few more times until he wasn't doing much leaving at all.

"I've made you uncomfortable, haven't I?" she said to his silence.

He said, "Have you ever met a salarian before?"

"You're the first one I've spoken to at length." She hesitated as if it wasn't something she believed would make a difference until that moment. "My experience is mostly with batarian and turian cultures."

That explained a lot, he thought. "Salarians don't really do romance or love," he told her. He hadn't said the words in years and they felt awkward in his mouth. "There's a spring season for breeding contracts and a lot of negotiating about who goes off with who while clout and credits get tossed around, but other than that it's not something we think about."

Meiko was very still, then pulled back from him. "I see," she said. She took a breath and he could hear her hair moving softly as she inclined her head forward. "Then I've created a terribly awkward situation for you. You have my apolo-"

"No," he said, interrupting her and feeling like a cloaca about it when her eyes widened. His voice softened. "No," he said again. "Don't apologize. Look, the truth is that I've done the whole thing a few times but I'm still trying to figure out if I'm bad news about it. And you're a dream, Miss Ogawa. I don't want you anywhere near me if it turns out I am."

"You're not bad news," she said, looking up at him.

Selar nodded politely and turned toward the door. "Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow."

And he left.

The carpeted hallway muffled his steps. He supposed that tomorrow morning she would remain thirty galactic standard centimeters away from him, where his personal space was supposed to begin and where any amorous intentions were supposed to end. He would eventually buy more furniture that only belonged to him and he wouldn't think about romance or love at all. He would keep the vid screen on in his apartment so the world wouldn't be so quiet.

And he would unwrap the _Tecunis_ with its little holofoil stars. Maybe that was for the best.

But the warmth in Selar's body chilled into pinpricks at the thought. He halted in the center of the hallway, unsettled, looked down at his gloved hands and fingers, his jacket and then his shoes. He didn't move when a group of turian diplomats grumbled and pushed past him. After a long time, he turned around and he headed back down the empty hallway.

He tore off his jacket like it was stinging him.

Meiko was holding her teapot when she opened the door again. She looked up at him with dark eyes and a questioning expression, didn't say anything at all. The trees moved beyond the open terrace behind her.

Selar took a deep breath and said, with his perfectly arranged jacket collar crumpled under his arm, "That's a completely average pot, correct?"

Meiko's voice was tinged with embarrassment. "It's just something I bought on discount before I came here," she admitted. Her expression grew defiant suddenly and she lifted her chin. "This is really quite awkward, isn't it, Constable? If you've come back to mock-"

Selar dipped his head down and kissed her in the doorway. The teapot fell from her hands and broke into a thousand pieces on the floor.


End file.
